Update 5/6: The cancellation period was just extended for another month through June 23. This would only leave one stop that has not been cancelled by the individual theaters on the tour, Orlando, FL, on June 24 and June 25 shows. It's unlikely that the whole remainder of the tour would just consist of 2 shows, so I suspect that these two shows will be cancelled soon too.
Update 5/4: The June 16 and 17 shows in Clearwater, FL have just been postponed. The new date(s) is uncertain. Update 4/28: The cancellation period has now been extended through May 26, due to stay-at-home orders that will still be in place during the times that performances were supposed to happen in certain states. Despite the Scooby-Doo and the Lost City of Gold tour group cancelling all performances through May 23, most theaters have taken extra precautions due to COVID-19 and cancelled their tour dates for the tour, which was initially going to run through June in the US. It is unclear at the moment whether the shows are fully cancelled, though a select few have announced that the events are only postponed, and a new date will be announced after the pandemic. These are the only US performances that are not cancelled at this time (though it is likely that they may be): June 24 & 25 7pm - Orlando, FL All other performances have been cancelled. These include: May 27 6:30pm - El Paso, TX May 28 7pm - Midland, TX May 30 2pm & May 31 1pm - Austin, TX June 2 6pm - San Antonio, TX June 4 7pm - Dallas, TX June 5 7pm - Sugar Land, TX June 6 6pm - New Orleans, LA June 7 6pm - Mobile, AL June 9 6pm - Birmingham, AL June 10 6pm - Louisville, KY June 12 6pm - Durham, NC June 13 7pm - Charleston, SC June 14 5pm - Atlanta, GA June 16 & 17 7pm - Clearwater, FL June 20 2pm & 6pm, June 21 2pm - Fort Lauderdale, FL June 27 6pm & June 28 1pm - Jacksonville, FL I will continue to update everyone if any of the remaining 2 performances cancel.
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Cartoon Network has announced on their "New Saturdays" block at 9am, there will be a special sneak peek of SCOOB! shown this Saturday at 9am. It is unclear if this sneak peek will include much new content that hasn't been revealed in previous trailers or not, but I wanted to share it regardless!
Also, SCOOB: The Album was just announced for release on May 12. Two songs have been announced so far, and both are original songs. The first is by Lennon Stella and Charlie Puth, entitled "Summer Feelings," and the second is by Kane Brown, Thomas Rhett and Ava Max, called "On Me." In addition to being the first voice of Daphne, Indira Stefanianna Christopherson also had a major singing career with her husband, Raul Danks. The two of them collectively made up the band Danks, and their biggest hit was called "Mountain of Love," which you can listen to above!
My favorite is definitely the Harlem Globetrotters. I just feel they fit in very nicely with the gang and almost feel like they could become regular members. Sorry to Don, who I did Knott pick for this poll. I hope he will Knott hate me for it. xD
But enough with the horrible puns, because we have to find out the results of last week's poll! We had 5 answers which were super close, but one completely overtook the others! What is your favorite of the apparitions in Boo Brothers? Beauregard's Ghost - 26 Skull Ghost - 9 Headless Horseman - 8 The Ape - 7 Glowing-Eyed Wolf - 6 Ghost in the Attic - 4 This isn't part of the weekly polls, but I thought I'd just do one for fun while we wait for new Guess Who episodes. I will post the results Friday! :) RESULTS: I Put A Hex On You! - 34 Space Station Scooby! - 12 Too Many Dummies! - 11 The High School Wolfman's Musical Lament! - 7 Dance Matron of Mayhem! - 5 The Wedding Witch of Wainsly Hall! - 4 A Run Cycle Through Time! - 0 Note that there were a lot of duplicate voting this time - even if you are voting more than once, but on different days, the system still deletes all of your votes and notifies me. Universal Studios classic villains from the original monster movies got everyone interested in the genre of horror way back in the 1930s. It seems only natural then that a series focused around solving mysteries of spooky monsters, even if they are usually people in masks, would include the Universal monsters that inspired the genre. Frequently throughout the Scooby-Doo universe, we have seen classic Universal Monsters utilized as villains in large groups, including the popular Where Are You episode "A Gaggle of Galloping Ghosts," and the Halloween special "A Halloween Hassle at Dracula's Castle." At the beginning of the year, I did a poll on the site about what people's favorite episodes using groups of classic Universal Monsters were. Given what a prominently used trope this is in the Scooby-Doo franchise, I'd like to dive a bit deeper into it and explore my opinions on how this can be done well. Keep in mind that I am solely reviewing these episodes based on the Universal monsters aspect of them. All of these are wonderful episodes, but some have a ways to go in staying consistent with the horror elements of the original... Let's start off on how this could be done not so well. Super Scary Movie Night is an episode of Shaggy & Scooby-Doo Get A Clue that features the abominable Dr. Phibes (anyone get the reference here?) creating monsters to terrorize Shaggy and Scooby on CD. The ghost that delivers the CD to Shaggy and Scooby, even though it's one of the agents, provides an amazing atmosphere especially with the lightning in the background at night. But the rest of the episode...has a ways to go in the horror department. Having a flatulent pig in the episode was obviously the first mistake, and the rest of the episode's atmosphere is very corny and silly rather than staying true to the original horror elements that popularized the use of Universal monsters. Take the "Money Mummy" for example, whose only frightening deed in the episode is pickpocketing people's wallets. Needless to say, I do love this episode and it's one of my favorite of Get A Clue, but analyzing it up against the other episodes that used this element, it doesn't do it particularly well. Who's Minding the Monster? is the question one New Scooby and Scrappy-Doo episode poses, when Daphne, Scooby, Shaggy and Scrappy help out Dracula and his wife babysit after Frankenstein disappears. Sound all over the place? Well...it is. This episode is so wacky that it, like the Get A Clue episode, suffers a bit. Everything feels very rushed in the episode and many things are left unexplored. One interesting dilemma that the episode brought up was the classic Munsters dilemma, of how two vampires (well, Herman was Frankenstein's monster in the series, but same idea) can make a werewolf baby. Dracula also refers to his wife as "poopsie," which is a serious mood killer for horror tropes lol. In the aforementioned poll, it's also worth noting that not a single person chose this episode as the best. Let's get to The Ghoul, The Bat and the Ugly (from The Scooby and Scrappy-Doo Show) next. Though we aren't in a castle, I think the idea of having the monster movie award show be the setting for Universal monsters showing up is an excellent idea, however, it was executed in a way where the monsters were just crammed in in favor of focusing on the Shadow Creature plot. Don't get me wrong, this is my favorite episode of the show and The Shadow Creature is one of my favorite villains. I just would have preferred if they separated the villains into different episodes, like maybe save the Shadow Creature for a different episode and just focus on the Universal monsters. It's a bit too much to focus on otherwise, and the monsters have to get pushed to the back burner. The atmosphere and horror tropes in this episodes are truly excellent, however, just that one element doesn't quite do it for me. A Gaggle of Galloping Ghosts from Where Are You remains many people's favorite episode. Atmospherically, I love anything to do with castles, and think it's a must when including anything on the Universal Monsters (with the exception of "The Ghoul, The Bat and the Ugly," which had such a revolutionary setting idea that it was still great). I love the monsters' designs as well, and the whole setup of why the gang goes there is super creepy. However, my quip with this particular episode is the monsters don't really have any reason to be there. It's not said if it's their castle, or why they're haunting it, and it's also not explained why they're in a group. As close as this episode comes to being perfect, I feel this one element could have been explained better. Before I move forward into the episodes I think are perfect, and what makes them perfect, I want to clarify that I hope this post isn't reading like "this episode is crap, and this episode is crap, and THIS episode is crap..." All of these episodes are so amazing that any criticisms I have are incredibly small and nitpicky. The point of this post was more to show how one could strike a perfect balance, and how I think this trope is done best.. And with that, these are the episodes that show us how: I'll admit I'm a huge optimist which makes me always imagine how things could be done better or differently in a positive way... and Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School definitely exemplifies this! I'm not going to definitively say it's my favorite because I am a bit of a purist when it comes to this trope (because of how much I love it!), but this movie does really well exploring a way to use the Universal monsters trope through a different lens. This will probably shock those who know me, given Ghoul School is my favorite Scooby movie of all time. I feel it's done a little better in one episode, but the idea of making the Universal monsters good guys, as well as their daughters, framed through the lens of a school is a super interesting idea! And we have a tie! Equally as perfect for this trope as Ghoul School is Scooby-Doo and the Reluctant Werewolf. It's a bit more silly with the monsters racing, but the use of real monsters and Dracula actively attempting to kill Shaggy and his friends amps up the stakes for me (no pun intended, but actually pun intended). The whole bit where Dracula is "king of all the monsters" and all the monsters report to him, whilst in his castle is a really cool idea. The whole vibe that the castle gives off is genuinely spooky, and the structural format of the monsters reporting to Dracula provided some great lore...which is a must for an episode using the Universal monsters trope. What could this episode have done better? Well, nothing, really. This one episode just had extra aspects that made it even better... A Halloween Hassle at Dracula's Castle truly exemplifies this trope in Scooby-Doo. Centering around the gang going to a Halloween party with the real Universal monsters is a genius idea, and as with Reluctant Werwolf, it's a structural masterpiece. The fact that it's centered around a classic holiday that inspires horror really cements it in for me, as well as the fact that we not only get that same monster grouping that works so well, but we also get two other villains! The lore behind Dr. Van Helsing being Dracula's age-old enemy, and now him being the only ghost that can scare the monsters is plot development perfection.
This is a trope that needs to stay alive in Scooby-Doo, and this episode is the perfect model for doing so, in my opinion. |
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